ADIPOQ and autoimmune disease: Some recent studies have also shown that adiponectin can act as an inducer of pro-inflammatory factors and that elevated levels of adiponectin may exacerbate the inflammatory response associated with various autoimmune diseases such as RA, osteoarthritis (OA), systemic lupus erythematosus, and inflammatory bowel diseases (Choi et al., 2020; Brezovec et al., 2021).